Use of wireless communication systems such as Third Generation Partnership Project Long Term Evolution (3GPP LTE) networks and LTE advanced (LTE-A) networks has increased dramatically year-to-year. The use of mobile user equipment (UE) such cellular telephones, smart phones, laptop computers and tablets to communicate through various radio access networks including LTE networks has recently resulted in approximately 90% penetration of such UEs into households in the United States. The content provided by such UEs includes voice, messaging and video data, each of which is typically packetized for transmission through one or more packet-switched networks.
The wireless communication systems include base stations (enhanced Node Bs (eNBs)) that may support various types of communication. Mobile UEs connect through a particular eNB to receive various types of data from other UEs or servers through the network. As each mobile UE moves geographically across a serving cell, the UE may eventually be handed off from the serving eNB to another, target eNB. During the handover, however, one or more data packets may be lost. This may raise a particular issue in cases in which the handovers are relatively frequent, e.g., due to a high rate of transition of the mobile UE across the geographical area forming the cell. While voice data may be fairly robust when it comes to packet loss, as a loss in voice quality may not be perceptible (or minimally perceptible) to the user because audio data are self-decodable, video data, on the other hand, may be particularly susceptible to packet loss, because the quality of video data decoding depends on previous decoded video data, causing a noticeable loss in quality. It thus may be desirable to reduce and/or compensate packet loss during handover.